A Forfar woman’s poker skills have earned her a trip to Las Vegas and the chance to win more cash.
What started as a dabble with the cards a few years ago has transformed into a week-long stay for Fiona Mackintosh and her fianc in the Nevada desert at the world’s most famous gambling strip.
The 39-year-old Tesco price integrity team leader is one of 11 amateur pub poker players from Scotland who is jetting off to Vegas next month.
They all won the prize trip to determine the UK’s pub poker champion after qualifying in the £265,000 Redtooth Poker Vegas 100 tournament last summer.
In its ninth year, Vegas 100, organised by Redtooth Poker, is the UK’s largest live pub poker league with more than 1,000 venues and 180,000 players registered with the event since it was launched in 2007.
Attention now turns to Las Vegas as the 100 Redtooth Poker winners and guests travel to America on May 27 for a week-long visit and the chance to win a slice of the £12,000 prize pool.
The winner will receive a £10,000 sponsorship deal and the chance of a seat in one of the qualifying events for the World Series of Poker, which is taking place in Vegas alongside Redtooth’s final.
The glitzy resort is a world away from Fiona’s first few tentative turns of the cards.
She said: “I started playing a few years ago at a friend’s house for something to do for an evening at the weekend.
“Then I discovered there was a game in the local pub and I used to go there with my friend for a couple of hours.
“Then I discovered The Zoar was doing it and I played there for about four years.”
The Zoar has since closed, but Fiona continues to play poker locally at the Royal British Legion and the Dunnichen Stone.